Hello, I'm Willem Van Lancker, an entrepreneur & investor living in New York. I build brands, products, and companies on the internet.

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NowThrive Capital

PastOyster (acquired by Google)Designer FundGoogle MapsIDEOAppleRISD

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Projects

In 2012, I co-founded Oyster, where we launched the first Netflix-for-books service — unlimited access to more than 1 million books for $10 a month. I was the Chief Product Officer and was the company's sole designer for our first year through launch.

Our team led the way in mobile reading, books discovery, and built a brand that celebrated the very best of books. We also launched an editorial magazine called the Oyster Review and ran several service projects supporting reading education. I talked to the Wall Street Journal and The Verge about our products.

After 3 years of building the company and growing the business, Google bought Oyster to accelerate Google Play's efforts in their books business.

At Google, I oversaw the Books business and design teams across Google Play. During that time I led the creation and launch of Google Play Audiobooks, directed a complete redesign of our apps on iOS and Android, and worked to double Books’ global revenue.

Early in 2018, I collaborated with Greg Leppert on an open source resource for naming things called Onym. From this, we started taking on some select clients and created a newsletter on naming news.